The Warren Beatty of Scottish politics

Mungo's diary in Scotland on Sunday (here) verges on the surreal:

"TUESDAY
More grumbles among our MSPs about the Lib Dems - everyone expects Nicol Stephen to quit the coalition soon, so most of us want Jack to get in first by booting them out. Jack's not having any of it, though. "I leave politics to the politicians," he said. "I see myself more as a higher authority - a kind of statesman, philosopher and teen idol wrapped into one. Like Warren Beatty."
WEDNESDAY
Wonderful day watching Blair's government collapse down south. Andy Kerr has videoed Patricia Hewitt getting booed off at the Royal College of Nursing. "It's pride of place in my collection, above Ally McCoist's 100 greatest goals and my Jane Fonda exercise tapes," he said.
Didn't think it could get any better until we saw Charles Clarke getting kebabbed over the deportation scandal. I rang up Fred Tough, his special adviser. "Hi Fred. Listen, sorry about your troubles. Just to say that if you need any help...don't ask us! Dawn raids ya bass!" It seemed funny at the time, then I remembered there's a joint Home Office/Justice Department meeting next month. He's a big guy is Fred.
Jack was on the ball immediately: "We need to tell Brown that now is the time to strike. Tell him that I, the undistilled spirit of Scotland, am behind him," he declared, sweeping from the room."

Just as well the spirit was undistilled. What would he have said if it had been distilled?

Scottish stereotypes

According to Scotland on Sunday (here), the Scottish Executive does not approve of 'Hamish Macbeth' or 'Monarch of the Glen':

"THE BBC has been attacked by the Scottish Executive for presenting "simplistic" and "outdated stereotypes" of Scotland.
In a thinly veiled attack against the country's "heather and Highlands" portrayal on TV, ministers claim that Scottish viewers have been "disadvantaged" because too many programmes are commissioned from London.
In a submission to the BBC's charter review, the Scottish Executive says the BBC needs to do more to show "authentic" images of modern Scotland, as opposed to hackneyed cliches of the country."

Apparently, no mention of the pitiful 'Reporting Scotland', full of earnest young men wearing suit jackets with all three buttons duly buttoned, young women waggling their hands about and so-called investigative reporters noted only for their incredible pomposity. Nobody would watch it but for Heather the Weather. Whereas Holyrood Live makes a fairly good job of reporting the Scottish Parliament (although it could profitably devote more attention to the committees).

And is the Executive in any position to point the finger? They seem content to call on kilts and shortbread when it suits them...

Who carries the can?

For reasons which escape me, it is somehow not quite the done thing to criticise senior civil servants. Surprising (if gratifying), therefore, to see (here) The Independent putting the boot into the previous permanent secretary at the Home Office:

"Even if you say it quickly, £26,527,108,436,994 is a lot of money. It equates to 1.3 times the GDP of the entire planet, more than 100 times the US budget deficit and 2,000 times the annual budget of the Home Office. It is also the amount the National Audit Office (NAO) came up with when it totted up all the debits and credits recorded by the Home Office in the financial year 2004-05 on its whiz-bang new accounting system.
No wonder the department had to make gross adjustments totalling more than £1bn to its accounts after they were filed. It seems that offenders from overseas are not the only things the Home Office is unable to keep track of.
All this would be shocking in a normal context. But what happened to the permanent secretary, Sir John Gieve, after a thousand prisoners and a billion quid was misplaced is the interesting thing. He was tipped to become permanent secretary at the Treasury - but lost out to Nicholas Macpherson. So, as a consolation prize, he was made deputy governor of the Bank of England.
...
Sir John, as we point out elsewhere, was appointed deputy governor in October and took up the job in January. By the Home Office's own admission, it was fully aware of the fact that it had lost track of more than 1,000 prisoners from foreign countries by July. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told the Prime Minister before Christmas. The audit of the Home Office accounts during which it emerged that the figures were wrong by a factor of 2,000 was completed in November."

It is easy to blame politicians. But it is worth remembering the well-paid (by any standards) senior civil servants who do a Macavity act when the flak starts flying.

Not the real thing

The Scotsman reports:

"The GMTV presenter Andrew Castle finally completed the London Marathon yesterday - five days after the former British tennis No 1 collapsed a mile from the finishing line."

No. Sorry. Doesn't count.

Away wi' the fairies

Once in a blue moon, the Scottish media decide to invalidate our earlier preconceptions. Here, for example, is The Scotsman sending up Mr Trump's pretensions and hinting at his raving egotism:

"Accompanied by the skirl of the pipes, Mr Trump descended from the steps of his black Boeing which, with his name emblazoned in ten-feet-tall gold letters on the fuselage, was the largest private number plate ever parked at Aberdeen airport.
A red carpet had been prepared for the occasion, as well as an honour guard of local dignitaries, while, behind a wire-mesh fence, gathered a collection of plane-spotters.
Mr Trump said to the assembled media: "I could kiss the ground."
He and his management team, flanked by architects and the designer of the new course, Tom Fazio II, then marched into a press conference, where Mr Trump began by explaining that his late mother, Mary Macleod, from Stornoway, was the inspiration behind the project. "I am building this maybe to a larger extent than I know, in honour of my mother," he said."

Who could have thought that The Scotsman would be so subversive?

Spinning wheels

And they wonder why the public is cynical. The Guardian tells the story:

"Vote blue, go green. That is the motto of Conservative leader David Cameron. And he has gone to various lengths to prove it. There was sledging with huskies in Norway; he has also extolled the virtues of a £10,000 wind-powered generator he wants to add to the roof of his home in Notting Hill, London; and he has promoted the obvious benefits of electric cars even though - and this is his green trump card - he cycles to work. So, practically no carbon emissions.
Well, so long as there isn't a chaffeur-driven Lexus arriving shortly after the Tory leader's two-wheeled departure to collect his clean shirt, paperwork and freshly polished shoes. It was revealed last night that, as Mr Cameron champions the need for better parks, more recycling and heading to the Arctic to examine climate change, his briefcase and other personal effects have their own personal courier.
"David is well-known for cycling to parliament," one source told the Daily Mirror yesterday. "But they always send his car home as well to pick up the morning papers and any personal items he'll need for the day. He leaves a pile of things inside the front door."

It's a tough life...

The superb deal?

So Setanta will pay a bit more to cover Scottish footie. The Scotsman reports:

"MONDAY night football could become a regular fixture of the Bank of Scotland Premierleague next season as a result of the new £54.5 million television deal with Setanta Sports announced yesterday.
In the biggest TV contract ever secured by the SPL, Setanta will screen live coverage of 22 matches featuring non-Old Firm clubs in addition to the 38 live games a season it currently shows on a Sunday afternoon. It has yet to be decided when the extra matches will be scheduled but the preferred option is a Monday evening.
The existing £33 million agreement with the satellite broadcaster, struck in the summer of 2004, still had two more seasons to run but has been renegotiated to the end of the 2009-10 campaign.
It is now worth £13.625 million a year to the SPL's 12 member clubs, an increase of over £5 million a year on the initial contract...
Lex Gold, the executive chairman of the SPL, welcomed the new deal yesterday which will also lend considerable support to the league's search for a new title sponsor to replace the Bank of Scotland, which is pulling out when its contract expires at the end of next season.
"We are absolutely delighted to agree an extension to our agreement with Setanta," said Gold. "It is a superb deal for our clubs financially and allows them to plan for the future with increased confidence."

Is it such a superb deal? Do the sums. The SPL is at present getting £8.625 million a year for 38 matches, or £227,000 per match; under the new arrangements, it is getting £13.625 million for 60 matches, again £227,000 per match. Perhaps that is a good deal - how many people, for example, would want to watch Inverness Caley Thistle play Dunfermline on a Monday night? But it is not self-evidently the case, especially if the cost involves the SPL selling its soul (as well as having to listen more frequently to the inarticulate commentary from Mark Hateley).

Car parking

If you have a few minutes, here is a nice little story by a parking attendant.

At least some of them are trying...

This blog has often been critical of the Scottish Parliament. But, just occasionally, it is encouraging to see that the Parliament is raising its game. This week, the committee system has twice demonstrated that it is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

First, on Tuesday, the Enterprise and Culture Committee put the Scottish Enterprise chiefs through the wringer; my impression is that SE will think twice before they next seek to bounce the Executive into financing decisions. And both Scottish Enterprise and the Executive will have realised, perhaps for the first time, that there is a third party looking over their backs. The report in Wednesday's Scotsman is here.

Then yesterday the Justice 1 Committee began its investigation into the McKie affair and immediately pulled out information that the Executive would have no doubt preferred to remain hidden. The Scotsman notes:

"THE majority of experts at Scotland's largest fingerprint bureau still believe a fingerprint left at a murder scene belonged to former detective Shirley McKie, MSPs were told yesterday.
Ms McKie has always denied the print was hers and has conducted a nine-year battle to clear her name, winning a perjury case brought against her and securing £750,000 in compensation earlier this year after the Executive admitted an "honest mistake" had been made.
But yesterday Ewan Innes, the head of the Scottish Fingerprint Service, said that a majority of the staff in the service's Glasgow office - the largest in the country - still disputed Ms McKie's claims.
Mr Innes was appearing before the Justice 1 Committee's parliamentary inquiry into the McKie case which also heard that there was a culture at the fingerprint service of not admitting to mistakes."

No-one is saying that the Committee system is perfect - there are some MSPs who are obvious passengers and there are others pursuing political agenda. But it is just possible that at least some of the individual committees amount to something greater than the sum of their members. At the very least, the Holyrood committee system is far superior to the Westminster-based Scottish Affairs Committee, even before it became moribund with the advent of devolution.

Doing the right thing?

For once, the First Minister appears to be paying appropriate care and attention to stopping the MSPs' gravy train. The Herald reports:

"Jack McConnell has ordered a review of one of the most lucrative of MSP allowances amid concerns that people are cashing in on the capital's property boom. The first minister yesterday asked the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to review the controversial Edinburgh Accommodation Allowance, which allows MSPs who live more than 90 minutes from Edinburgh to claim up to £10,600 a year for a mortgage on a second home. Around 50 MSPs are thought to have taken advantage of the scheme since devolution, and some are believed to have sold on their homes for large profits."

Would it be unduly cynical to note that the overwhelming majority of Labour MSPs live within 90 minutes from Edinburgh? And that those who benefit from this Allowance are those MSPs from the Highlands and Islands, the North-East and the South-West, few of whom tend to be of the Labour persuasion?

Tomb raider

What does an ambitious chancellor of the exchequer do when his cabinet chums are in trouble? The Guardian diary explains what Mr Brown was up to yesterday:

"With all those cabinet ministers making their bizarre ways into the news yesterday, the Diary feels a bit like the satirist Tom Lehrer did when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize: "Who needs satire?" But at least one member of the cabinet had a cheerful day. Gordon Brown had a telephone link-up with Angelina Jolie in her UN high commissioner for refugees role to discuss the Global Campaign for Education. The media were invited to listen in and one reporter asked Ms Jolie if she thought Mr Brown would make a good prime minister. "I don't want to get involved in UK politics," she said diplomatically. "I do feel from what I know and learned of his leadership that the things he has done, like this step forward in education, that I like him more and more very much. I hope that he can do many more things. So, yes, personally, I would like to see it." That's a better sort of day than explaining the opening of prison doors or the closing of hospitals, isn't it?"

An endorsement from Ms Jolie must be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And I am sure that Messrs Clarke and Prescott, together with Ms Hewitt, will fully understand...

More on released prisoners

Holyrood Live on BBC has just revealed that the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Prison Service have been unable to find out if any of the 1,023 released foreign prisoners referred to by the Home Office in yesterday's and today's statements were released from Scottish gaols.

Euphemisms

With reference to the two big sex stories in today's newspapers:

first, I'd really rather not think about John Prescott's sex life; and

secondly, why does everyone refer to the celebrity in the golf course hotel as having committed a solo sex act? Masturbation is not, as far as I am aware, a dirty word in itself. And, if four syllables takes up too much space, there are plenty of demotic alternatives.

Does taking personal responsibility mean anything?

Much has been and will be written about the fiasco of the release of foreign prisoners. But The Independent puts its finger on the vulnerability of Mr Clarke (here):

"The fiasco - which only came to light after repeated questions from a Tory MP - plunged Mr Clarke into the worst crisis of his 16-month spell in charge of the department and dismayed Labour chiefs hoping to highlight the party's law and order credentials in next week's local elections. The pressure on him intensified last night when it emerged that 288 of the prisoners were freed after August 2005 when MPs first alerted the Home Office to the problem."

So, even although Home Office Ministers were alerted to the problem last August, the authorities continued to let foreign prisoners leave prison with any consideration of deportation; and, apparently, the practice continued up until March of this year. It is difficult to blame Mr Clarke and his team for failings which predated his appointment or of which Ministers were simply uninformed. But it seems entirely justified to hold the current set of Ministers personally responsible for the 288 most recently released.

Clean living

The Guardian provides an excuse for an old joke (here):

"It's a simple recipe, but it could add 11 years to your life, possibly more. A study by Cambridge University on behalf of the Department of Health has calculated the formula for longevity. Giving up smoking means an extra five years, moderate exercise three more. Add to that another three by eating five portions of fruit and veg a day. For couch potatoes, a pear a day could make a difference too."

It's not really true - you don't actually live longer, it just feels like it.

Stuff happens...

As ever, Steve Bell in The Guardian sums it up (here).

No doubt, we will learn later today whether the Scottish Prison Service has anything to confess.

The future of air travel

Remember the parlour game of sardines? The aircraft manufacturers do. The New York Times explains:

"The airlines have come up with a new answer to an old question: How many passengers can be squeezed into economy class?
A lot more, it turns out, especially if an idea still in the early stage should catch on: standing-room-only "seats."
Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none have agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.
But even short of that option, carriers have been slipping another row or two of seats into coach by exploiting stronger, lighter materials developed by seat manufacturers that allow for slimmer seatbacks. The thinner seats theoretically could be used to give passengers more legroom but, in practice, the airlines have been keeping the amount of space between rows the same, to accommodate additional rows."

They'll be strapping us on to the wings next.

It hurts, you know

The Guardian newsblog gets a bit sniffy (here) about Jade Goody's performance in yesterday's marathon:

"The look from TV chef Gordon Ramsay said it all. When Jade Goody, interviewed before she started yesterday's London marathon, said she'd done little training and hadn't swapped her curries for carbo-fuelled bowls of pasta, you didn't need to be a genius to know what Ramsay was thinking - it's going to hurt and it's going to hurt bad, writes London marathon veteran Liz Ford.
In the end it did a little more than that. Goody, the Big Brother "star" who has made a subsequent living from appearances in Heat magazine and, ironically, releasing fitness videos, collapsed in
exhaustion 18 miles into the course."

The girl did 18 miles - give her a little credit.

But congratulations to all those who are, for 26.2 miles of reasons, walking backwards downstairs today.

Sailing close to the wind

The Scotsman reports on the downside of the First Minister's continuing admiration for celebrity and money:

"JACK McConnell was on the defensive yesterday over allegations that he broke the ministerial code of conduct by backing a luxury golf resort planned by Donald Trump.
Councillors in Aberdeenshire and environmentalists are concerned that the First Minister's meetings with the American billionaire developer could prejudice the planning process for the development. They are concerned that local homes will be lost and a pristine area of coastline ruined.

Mr McConnell was also alleged to have met Robert Morris weeks before the furniture tycoon received a massive pay-out from the taxpayer to relocate his factory. Mr McConnell's aides have described both accusations as "ridiculous"."

I sometimes wonder if the First Minister actually understands the need to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. In order to breach the Ministerial code, he does not actually need to assure Mr Trump that he will call in any planning application and approve it; he merely has to put himself in a position where people might think that he might have done so. And assertions of innocence in the fact do not dispel criticisms of the appearance.

Finally, of all the tourist attractions which Scotland might require to enhance its repertoire, do we really need yet another golf course?

The Treasury is not a piggy bank

By waxing lyrically about the iniquities of Treasury control, The Herald rather misses the point:

"GORDON Brown's department has frozen £1.5bn of Scottish Executive funds and told Holyrood ministers they must justify their spending plans before the money will be released. The Treasury has broken the fragile funding pact between London and Edinburgh by imposing conditions on the return of money from the savings account which the department holds for the executive. The unprecedented challenge to Holyrood's autonomy is causing growing alarm among Scottish ministers.
...
The money being withheld is a result of the Executive's failing to spend its annual grant within the year allocated. By last August, the total was £1,531,892,000."

If it were not for the fact that the Executive had failed to spend the funds which it was allocated in previous years, the question of Treasury controls would not arise. The real scandal is the accumulated underspend by the Scottish Executive of £1.5 billion. This is money which they were allocated but did not spend. It may not be enormous by comparison with the Executive's annual spend of £22 to £27 billion but it still represents significant incompetence on the part of the Executive.